LISTEN AND SHARE “SPRING THAW” HERE
FIGURE WALKING, THE NEW BAND FROM POLARIS MUSIC PRIZE NOMINATED SONGWRITER GREG MACPHERSON, DEBUT LP THE BIG OTHER DUE OUT APRIL 28 VIA DISINTEGRATION RECORDS
SPRING TOUR DATES BEGIN APRIL 28. MORE DATES TBA
PHOTO CREDIT : Kristian Jordan // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES
Built on Greg MacPherson’s powerful songwriting, and the relentless backbone of Rob Gardiner’s drumming, Figure Walking, the two-piece based in Winnipeg, infamous as Canada's coldest, most racist city, have taken social criticism and justice to heart with their new record The Big Other, creating a record that is meaningful, unconventional, and exciting.
Today, just a few days into a new season, Figure Walking have announced their upcoming tour dates and are sharing “Spring Thaw”, a Winnipeg love song. “Winter in Winnipeg is a deep freeze that starts in late October,” says MacPherson. “There's an annual tipping point between frustration and madness that falls for some around Valentine's Day and others when the clocks spring forward. The longer the temperature stays below zero, the more we slide: binge drinking, tanning beds, violent crime, death metal, etc. Winnipeggers with money fly somewhere warm for a while but the rest of us stay inside pacing, shouting, and climbing walls. Two consecutive days above zero in March though and people spill out onto the sidewalks staring directly into the sun... no time for spring, just a full commitment to the hottest day of the year four months before it arrives. Fires are set, a full moon every night for a week, cutoff jeans, mesh shoes, empty bottles in every filthy snowbank. This year, 2017, those two consecutive days are happening right now; people are yelling new words at each other and as I type this, old cars are doing brake-stands in the road-sand and trash. ‘Spring Thaw’ is about the brain fever that is spring in Winnipeg, the tidal pull of desire and desperation for change that makes people cheat on their best friend, move to another city, quit their safe job. It's also a testament to the fact that our frozen rivers are a temporary mask for Manitoba's glacially slow pace of change, particularly for those whose ancestors are buried along the banks of the Red and whose loved ones have been disappeared into its muddy waters.”
LISTEN AND SHARE “SPRING THAW” HERE
Due out April 28 via Disintegration Records, The Big Other accomplishes the rare feat of presenting big ideas on a foundation of dance beats, electric guitar, and storytelling. The jagged, arthouse post-punk of “Submarines” and “Spring Thaw” demand movement. “Blue World”, with its gauzy swells of aquatic guitar, thumping bass lines, and vivid soundscapes, is a hopeful anthem to reconciliation and possibility. “Singapore”, puts the average hot-blooded North American on a plain dropping into the Pacific, where lust and the no longer exotic combine in the celebrity image of Janet Jackson and a renewed 30 something romance.
If there’s a mission statement drilled into The Big Other, it comes at the surprise ending of “Funeral”, a swirling barrage of cheerleading gang vocals that command, “let’s just try to celebrate, dance until this all makes sense.”
In MacPherson and Gardiner’s own words, “Figure Walking is our attempt as artists to focus on who we are in the present and to take ownership of what we’re bringing into the world, with an eye on a better future.”
MacPherson is a G7 Welcoming Committee Records alumni whose music was never strictly ideological or easily categorized. His past two solo albums, Mr. Invitation and Fireball, have both been nominated for the Polaris Music Prize.
LISTEN AND SHARE “VICTORIOUS” HERE
FIGURE WALKING TOUR DATES
Apr 28 - Guelph @ Van Gogh's Ear
Apr 29 - Kingston @ the Mansion House
Apr 30 - Toronto @ Trazac (5pm show)
May 2 - Hamilton @ Casbah (early show)
May 4 - Quebec City @ Alejandro's
May 5 - Trois-Rivieres @ Microbrasserie Le Temps d'une Pinte
May 6 - Montreal @Bistro de Paris
May 7 - Windsor @ Phog Lounge
*MORE DATES TBA*
THE BIG OTHER TRACK LISTING
SIDE A
1. Sounds
2. Submarine
3. The Country
4. Summer Haze
5. Blue World
SIDE B
1. Victorious
2. Singapore
3. Spring Thaw
4. Funeral
5. Call Me Up
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